Migdalia Soto checked into Lincoln Hospital after suffering a stroke and wound up in the psych ward for days, tranquilized and barely able to speak.

Somehow, this did not show up as an "adverse incident" reported to the state.

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The state Health Department says there was no "statement of deficiencies," indicating either it found no wrongdoing or that the hospital didn't tell the agency about it.

Records make clear there was some concern that something went wrong. Proof of that is the $850,000 the city paid to settle the family's suit.

"It outrages me to know that my mom is basically irreparably damaged," said one of her sons, Miguel. "She's not going to be the same person she was."

Hospital officials wouldn't comment. The Daily News reconstructed Soto's experience at Lincoln from family interviews and internal hospital records that surfaced in the suit.

On Jan. 14, 2005, Soto, a 47-year-old pharmacist's assistant, had a stroke while washing dishes in her Bronx apartment. At Lincoln's medical emergency room, she was unable to form words, couldn't stand up and indicated she felt nothing on her right side - telltale signs of a stroke.

She was diagnosed with a mental condition and put in the psych ward. Because she arrived on Martin Luther King Day weekend, she wasn't transferred to the medical ward until Jan. 19.

Her three kids say they tried in vain to convince interns and psychiatric residents that their mother wasn't mentally ill or on drugs.

"We told the doctors, 'Look, this is not normal for my mom. Something's wrong,' " Miguel Soto said. "They kept telling us it's in her head, that she can walk, she's just refusing to walk."

Staff decided Soto was suffering from psychosis. Patient "believes she cannot walk," one record says. Soto was "delusional that she cannot use the right side of her body," reads another. Doctors gave her anti-psychotics.

That Sunday, Miguel discovered his mother had fallen out of bed. He told the doctor something was wrong with her legs.